Hamlet on the Ramparts, Folger Text 4

Codes
+ + = emendation; <> = First Folio; [ ] = Second Quarto only

+1.5+

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

HAMLET
          Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I'll go no
               further.
GHOST
          Mark me.

HAMLET              I will.
GHOST                          My hour is almost come              5
          When I to sulf'rous and tormenting flames
          Must render up myself.
HAMLET                              Alas, poor ghost!
GHOST
          Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
          To what I shall unfold.                                 10

HAMLET Speak. I am bound to hear.

GHOST
          So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET What?
GHOST I am thy father's spirit,
          Doomed for a certain term to walk the night             15
          And for the day confined to fast in fires
          Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
          Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
          To tell the secrets of my prison house,
          I could a tale unfold whose lightest word               20
          Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
          Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their
               spheres,
          Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
          And each particular hair to stand an end,               25
          Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
          But this eternal blazon must not be
          To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!
          If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
HAMLET    O God!                                                  30
GHOST
          Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET Murder?
GHOST
          Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
          But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
HAMLET
          Haste me to know 't, that I, with wings as swift        35
          As meditation or the thoughts of love,
          May sweep to my revenge.
GHOST                          I find thee apt;
          And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
          That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,               40
          Wouldst thou not stir in this.

1.5.3 Mark me: pay attention to me

1.5.9 lend thy serious hearing: listen intently

1.5.11    bound: ready (The word also means "in duty bound" and
                "obligated," which is the sense to which the Ghost
                responds in the following line)

1.5.16 for: during

1.5.21 harrow up: tear up (agricultural image)

1.5.22-23 stars . . . spheres: In Ptolemaic astronomy, each
planet (star) was carried around the earth in a
crystalline sphere.

1.5.25 an end: on end

1.5.26 fearful porpentine: uneasy (threatened) porcupine

1.5.27 eternal blazon: description of that which is eternal

1.5.39 duller . . . be : you would be duller; fat: thick

1.5.40 Lethe wharf: bank of the river Lethe (the river of
forgetfulness)

1.5.41 Wouldst thou not: if you did not